Home is where you can walk barefooted
by potsugi
Summary: "Where do you think home is?"


This was a tumblr prompt that suddenly got much longer. Nice. (also listen to the song stay by rihanna... shh just trust me...)

* * *

Home is where you can walk barefooted.

**I**

The shortest distance between two points  
It's a straight  
line.

* * *

Sougo gathers up the courage to convince her one morning when he sees her walking down the street. Such a mundane action, but it's the fact that she makes it look so unique (as if just by walking under the sun happiness could be attained) that makes him cave in.

It takes him several broken bones, broken hearts, and broken park benches (and other buildings, maybe) to convey his feelings as real. She keeps thinking he's messing with her head so he can have the upper hand.

"Oh, so me asking you out actually messes with your head?"

"Shut up! It messes with my head because it's so _gross_!" but she is red like a cherry, and it's endearing, and he knows he's winning (maybe there _is_ a bit of competition behind it, but then again there always is between both of them).

She throws the flowers at his face, steps on the cake (which may have had tabasco sauce) crushes his hands and picks his eyes out, each time more flustered. Until one night she finds him around the corner, grabs him by the collar and head-butts him; their lips touching so _slightly_ (butterflies fluttering against his face), it's contradictory to how much of a _brute_ she is and how much his forehead hurts.

Kagura orders him to buy her more cakes ("_And don't you dare add hot sauce, I will end you_"), he tells her she's gonna have to get better at kissing.

**xxx**

They accept each other in their own little way; that is not dating, but it's not being friends (or rivals or whatever bullshit they had categorized themselves in when they were younger and dumb); that's all they can pinpoint that makes them feel right. They both have better things to do than trying to figure out a name for their relationship. They don't need categories anymore.

Okita never aimed for marriage or family or any of those cheesy things. Kagura thinks about it, maybe once every full moon, but never mentions it, her own family experiences haunting her.

And still after all the work he does for her, she decides to leave.

**xxx**

"Where do you think home is?" she asks him one afternoon after sparring for hours. They're sweaty and lying on the grass, and the park bench is broken yet again (if anyone thought their fights would stop once they accepted whatever they felt, then they didn't know them at all).

He looks at her, her cheeks red and her hair all sticky and disgusting.

"You wanna get philosophical? What is life even about, anyways?"

Kagura gives him the finger.

"I'm serious. Do you think home is made, or found?"

He thinks he understands. Her father came to visit her just days ago (Umibozu eyed Sougo like a hungry bear would look at a half dead salmon), and she always gets like this when he leaves (he wishes she could explain more, but she never does and it _irks_ him).

"Isn't it both? You find people you like and then you make a place for yourself. The place may change, and the people too, but the feeling is the same." he's not sure why he answers so honestly, and it feels there's an insult missing.

She stays silent.

"Papi has been asking me to travel with him so I can train" he knows where she's going with the conversation. He wants so shut her up with a kick, a slap, a kiss "I'm going with him".

It hurts more than he's willing to admit, but not as much as he thought it would. He stands up, doesn't offer a hand for her, and walks away.

**xxx**

"China-san! Have a nice trip, we hope to see you soon!" even Kondo is there.

And Hijikata and Otae and Kyubei and Tsukuyo and Sacchan and Otose and Tama. Gintoki and Shinpachi have been holding her hands. Sadaharu is waiting for her inside the ship.

He doesn't even bother to see her off. Kagura shrugs, but her father gives her a look that promises revenge.

Hijikata stops her before she turns around "He would have come" he says, quiet and confident, as if telling her a secret "but I think he's too heartbroken to see you". There's something in his voice that makes it sound like he's been there. Kagura shrugs again. She would be heartbroken too.

"I told him I would come back. He's a weak, spoiled little thing"

And she leaves.

**xxx**

Sougo drains the memories away. He gets that it's a great opportunity, and that she misses her father, and that it's her right, but what bothers him the most is knowing that she belongs up there, not down in a place that makes her cover her skin with an umbrella. It's as if he had forgotten _she's not even human_.

At ten years old he would have never even thought Amantos could look like people. At sixteen the idea of kissing one of them was disgusting. At eighteen it became amusing. At twenty it became a reality. It also became his thought, his bloodstream.

He hates her.

**xxx**

The first letter arrives two weeks after she leaves. It's short, simply stating that he is disgustingly spoiled and immature and that she's very disappointed.

It takes him another week to think of a reply. And when he does, it's a telegram, the words injected with cheapness, as if someone was charging him for each one of them.

_Whoa, you're still alive? What a wonder._

But Kagura writes back.

_I will kick your ass so bad._

Her letters are always longer, less bitter but still filled with hatred (or annoyance, he never knows with her). His replies are mostly cutting (but he replies, _every time_, within the week) He realizes how it must look like for the mailman: a long distance relationship. Where they even in a relationship to begin with? They never figured it out, but he's damn sure they are not in one now: not with her miles and miles away and with him hating her from below the sky.

**xxx**

_I saw an Amanto that looks just like you with that freaky ass sleeping mask you use. What a weirdo. Also Papi is still super angry at you. He says I should get myself a nice Yato that won't leave me at the altar. I explained we are never getting married and he looked happy. What about it? Should I get a nice Yato?_

**xxx**

_You should get one of those aliens that look like a pudding gone wrong. Suits you better, you pig._

**xxx**

_Fuck you, you punk. I'll find a prince of some planet. Also I'll have you know the only thing I miss from your sorry planet is the food. Stuff here doesn't even look edible_.

**xxx**

_Yea, because __**that**__ went well last time. Even if it's not edible you will eat it anyway._

**xxx**

_We met other Yatos today. I didn't even know there were more females apart from Mommy and me. And they were Papi's friends too! They were nicer that most. And there was a boy my age; Papi was very pushy wanting me to talk to him. He seems scared of me though._

**xxx**

_Of course he is; you are a monster. Few should be punished with handling you. Me being one of those few._

**xxx**

The months after her leaving keep silent. He patrols, he fights the occasional criminal, he tries to kill Hijikata. He floats into the routine he had before her (it's good, but empty). One afternoon while he walks around the park (the benches haven't been broken in months and it fills him with something disgusting (he is _not_ sulking, he is _not_ missing her)) he finds Gintoki walking a bunch of dogs.

"Souichiro-kun"

"After all these years you still can't get that it's Sougo?"

"What a surprise. You never come anymore, now that Kagura isn't here" He pets the animals and hears Shinpachi struggle with the bigger ones in the distance.

"I have never visited you before"

"Exactly, how very rude"

Okita wonders why this man (and the one being dragged by huskies and great Danes) isn't in a more miserable state.

"How are you holding up? I bet you're bored."

"Holding up with what?"

Gintoki sighs loudly "You know you should have more faith in her; in the fact that she _is_ coming back, eventually." _Eventually_, Sougo repeats in his mind.

But he doesn't wait for _anyone_. Not even her. Especially not her,

"Ah, I don't get what you mean, Boss. And I think Glasses boy over there is being used as a munching toy"

He walks past them feeling Gin's stare on his back.

**xxx**

_And I thought Earth was bad, oh my god. This planet I'm in has the brightest sun I have ever seen. I have to walk around with bandages and I can't fight properly. _

_Also I think that Yato boy (his name is Xing btw, not that you care) has seriously fallen for my charm. He keeps trying to help me when we fight, and when we spar he never really goes for it. It's super boring, but I guess he's a gentleman, unlike some punk I know. Papi likes him, he says "better than that useless little man from earth". He also says I should marry him one day. How about it, should I even marry?_

_should I mry you whe n I come bck_

The last words are blurry and scraped over, but he makes them out (reads them two, three, four, ten times). He takes twice as long to answer.

_No I don't care about his name, and you have no charm, and I hope you roast to death wherever you are; that's what you get for leaving. And your dad is an asshole._

_If you ever manage to come back somehow. _

Sougo knows she will get it. _Eventually_.

**xxx**

Days pass, weeks, months, and she doesn't write back. He thinks maybe she actually roasted to death just so she didn't have to marry him, and feels slightly satisfied, slightly disappointed and slightly (_worried_) bored.

He meets a girl whose name he almost always gets wrong. She has a ponytail and eats moderately and never tries to aim a kick at his balls. They start dating.

**xxx**

He keeps her letters in a nice trash can that looks a lot like an average box. But it's not, it _is_ a trash can. To prove it (to no one really, just to himself) he throws it away at the park, beside an unbroken bench.

**xxx**

_We found him. We weren't even close to the Harusame and he jumped against us as soon as he saw Papi and his friends. He ignored me, at first, but… I think I lost it. I remember we were fighting and he was saying something and I blacked out. I woke up when Papi was holding me down and Kamui was lying on a pool of blood. _

_I don't want to travel anymore. I'm going back_.

**xxx**

_I'm not marrying you._

**xxx**

Kagura arrives alone. He hears about her before seeing her, feels a thug at his lungs, an entire zoo stampeding around his intestines. She probably brought a fucked up disease with her that affects only him. It feels like a black and white old movie reel suddenly burning while it's being projected.

They find each other days after at the park.

"Shit, you look like crap" he speaks first. He always threw the first insult, ever since he was eighteen when he met her at some flower viewing event and she started the slow process of messing him up.

She does _not_ look like crap.

"And you look even shorter, did you shrink? You're living up to become an actual Chihuahua, uh."

He doesn't understand what she means by '_lost it'_ in her letter, he doesn't know how finding her brother could make her want to stop traveling, but he doesn't give a fuck. She's right in front of him.

They break the bench after two years of everything being too quiet.


End file.
